at which
they at once began to go hardly left him time to raise a protest. Not a
little anxious, he thought only of watching the horizon and keeping a
lookout for obstacles.

The trees vanished on either side almost unseen. Their foliage overhead
made a rhythmical sound as of moaning waves. Night insects dashed
themselves to death against the lamps.

"We shall get there right enough," Mazeroux ventured to observe. "There's
no need to put on the pace."

The speed increased and he said no more.

Villages, plains, hills; and then, suddenly in the midst of the darkness,
the lights of a large town, Le Mans.

"Do you know the way to the station, Alexandre?"

"Yes, Chief, to the right and then straight on."

Of course they ought to have gone to the left. They wasted seven or eight
minutes in wandering through the streets and receiving contradictory
instructions. When the motor pulled up at the station the train was
whistling.

Don Luis jumped out, rushed through the waiting-room, found the doors
shut, jostled the railway officials who tried to stop him, and reached
the platform.

A train was about to start on the farther line. The last door was banged
to. He ran along the carriages, holding on to the brass rails.

"Your ticket, sir! Where's your ticket?" shouted an angry collector.

Don Luis continued to fly along the footboards, giving a swift glance
through the panes, thrusting aside the persons whose presence at the
windows prevented him from seeing, prepared at any moment to burst into
the compartment containing the two accomplices.

He did not see them in the end carriages. The train started. And suddenly
he gave a shout: they were there, the two of them, by themselves! He had
seen them! They were there: Florence, lying on the seat, with her head on
Sauverand's shoulder, and he, leaning over her, with his arms around her!

Mad with rage he flung back the bottom latch and seized the handle of the
carriage door. At the same moment he lost his balance and was pulled off
by the furious ticket collector and by Mazeroux, who bellowed:

"Why, you're mad, Chief! you'll kill yourself!"

"Let go, you ass!" roared Don Luis. "It's they! Let me be, can't you!"

The carriages filed past. He tried to jump on to another footboard.
But the two men were clinging to him, some railway porters came to
their assistance, the station-master ran up. The train moved out of
the station.

"Idiots!" he shouted. "Boobies! Pack of